Dirty Movies (48 page)

Michael received a second text from his father
when he touched down in Los Angeles, the following day. He read it with the same flash of bewilderment.

We need to speak. Walt

Soon after, his phone started beeping with five new voicemail messages, all of which turned out to be from an old surfer buddy of his, Jesse Roth, who now worked for one of the leading trade magazines in LA,
Hollywood Film
.

Standing in a corner of baggage reclaim
, dispatching Joe to keep an eye out for his bag, he called his friend back straightaway.

‘Jesse
it’s Mike.’

‘Mike! Buddy! Congrats on the BAFTA, we’re all rooting for Harper and
Memoir
here.’

‘Gee t
hanks. Listen, I got your messages…’

‘Cool. When are you back in LA?’

‘Just landed thirty minutes ago.’

‘Even bet
ter! How about we grab some lunch? My shout.’

‘Sounds fun but
I’ve press stuff all day, then some actor buddy of Christine’s is hosting us a celebratory shindig tonight.’

‘Gotta keep that exposure up
,’ chuckled Jesse. ‘I don’t mean to screw with your schedule but we really need to meet.’

Michael watched Joe wave his reclaimed bag aloft in triumph
but all he could feel was an impending sense of doom.

‘
Is anything to do with my father?’

There was a pause.

‘I’ll take that as a yes. Tell me straight, Jess, is it real awful? Do I need a triple vodka to cope?’ As he said it, he was reminded of his nose-dive into a bottle two summers ago. Those had been the darkest days of his life. Surely, whatever Jesse had to say today couldn’t be worse than that.

‘No need
for the alcohol,’ said Jesse quickly, catching a glimpse of his secretary’s flexing guns as she re-armed his water-cooler. ‘It’s nothing bad. In fact it’s great. It’s just so….so…unexpected.’

Michael was almost dizzy with fear now. His father never did anything
unexpected
. He lived, no he
thrived
, on strict timetables and schedules. This was the man who threw a strop if his 7am macchiato turned up ten seconds late.

‘Tell me
,’ he gasped, struggling to keep his voice steady. He didn’t even crack a smile when Joe dived forth to extract his own bag, trapped a Converse lace in the carousal and hopped frantically up and down like an outraged chicken before wrenching it free.

‘
A colleague of mine just got a call from Serena Madders. Seems your father wants to submit an article for this week’s edition.’

Michael frowned. ‘He must be pimping out
Love Letters
. He did the same with
Pirates
and
Warrior Tigress
. These op-eds are nothing new in Award Season. Actors champion fellow actors. Sometimes studio bosses even champion their dickhead directors…’

‘But that’s what’s so fucking odd
,’ said Jesse. ‘It’s not so much a
For Your Consideration
op-ed. as a
For Your Non-Consideration
. He’s totally knocking it. Well Stephen De Vries to be exact.’

M
ichael nearly dropped his phone.

‘By Wednesday this’ll be the biggest story in Hollywood
,’ went on Jesse. ‘‘Studio boss trashes his own movie’s Oscar chances. Your Pa stands to lose freakin’ millions. His timing is incredible for you guys. There’s still a week and a half left before the ballots close…You want me to read it out to you?’

‘Can you email it instead?’ asked Michael
, faintly.

‘Sure,
I’ll do it now. Look, Mike, call me back when you’ve read it. I’d love a quote.’

‘I’ll see what I can do
.’

With a thudding heart, Michael hung up and walked straight out of baggage reclaim, through the arrivals hall
and into a waiting yellow taxicab. Jesse’s email came through just as the taxi was pulling away. He read it in silence then lent forward to tap on the driver’s partition.

‘Scrap the last address I gave you
,’ he said in a choked voice. ‘Take me straight to Global Studios.’

Arriving forty minutes later in a cloud of dust, he barged into his father’s office and found him reclining on one of his enormous black leather sofas with a tray of Sprinkles cupcakes in one hand, and a familiar-looking girl with cropped blonde hair wearing a short red dress with white daisies, clamped to the other.

There are two things wrong with
this scene, thought Michael, grinding to a halt. Firstly, it was unheard of for his father to snack before midday. The guy watched his weight like a hungry dog watched a freshly roasted chicken. Secondly, and far more disturbing, his father appeared to be smiling. No, scrap that, his father was
laughing.
Despite this, no one could have been more shocked than Walt, when his son opened his mouth and started yelling at him.

‘You couldn’t help yourself
, could you?’ exploded Michael, brandishing his phone at his father like a medieval war hammer. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you, Dad? Finally figured out I might actually be making a go of it without your connections?’

‘Calm down, Michael
,’ snapped Walt, whipping the smile off his face. ‘Sit down and have a cupcake. Come and meet Lucy.’

‘I don’t want a fucking cupcake!’ howled
Michael. ‘I spoke to you in Cannes about
Memoir
and you scoffed at it, told me to go and make my own way, before dismissing me like some kid caught cheating on his exam paper. But you know what? We did ok. We made a good movie. We sold it worldwide and hit every top ten Best Movie List of last year. Fuck, we might have even had a shot at an Oscar on the back of a simple, well-made, low-budget flick that people genuinely loved, not to mention an honest, well-fought campaign, until you went and stuck your two cents in with your stupid article.’

‘You ungrateful shit!’ roared Walt, jumping to his feet. ‘I wrote that thing as way of an apology
. For all the times I put GBA first over you.’

‘C
’mon dad, this isn’t about GBA,’ scoffed Michael. ‘It’s about you not able to face the fact that I don’t want to inherit your fucking studio. I’m not stupid, I know it was you that hired Garrett and sanctioned the release of those Morocco photos. If I wasn’t going to trot home like a good boy, you were going to make damn sure I was dragged to the abattoir.’

Walt stared at him in shock. ‘Son, I…’

‘Save it,’ said Michael, turning away. ‘God knows what you’ve managed to dig up that’s brought about this hasty 180…’ his eyes flickered momentarily over the blonde, ‘but save Stephen’s public flogging for next month. After that, I don’t give a shit if Serena marches him out of the studios in a headlock. All I care about, right now, is Harper winning that Oscar fair and square. No dirty tricks. No negative campaigning. We’ve managed to maintain a dignified fucking silence this long, in spite of all the crap you’ve thrown at us.’ 

Walt shook his head at him. ‘I can’t do it, the magazine’s gone to print
.’

‘Not according to my sources.
You still have an hour to retract it,’ said Michael, chucking his phone at him. It fell short and crash-landed in amongst the cupcakes instead. Lucy squealed in shock.

‘You do realise you’ll be handing De Vries that Oscar
?’ said Walt, refusing to budge. ‘I won’t stand by and let that happen. Not now I know the truth about him, Vincent, Maisie…’

Michael shook his head. ‘I don’t care. I don’t want a single award
that profits from that article.’ He paused as he reached the door. ‘I mean it, dad, retract it, or you and me are through.’

Michael pull
ed up to his house and found his director sitting on his front porch playing cards with Benny his pool cleaner.

Joe glanced up when
he heard the taxi door slam. Moments later, Benny was scampering back to his van. Michael was wearing the same murderous expression of two summers ago, when he had gone all reclusive with his big bad beard and his magnum.

Storming up the pathway, Michael
ignored Joe, stepping over him like he was a six-foot garden gnome, and booting the front door open with his foot.

‘Wanna talk about it?’ asked Joe
, carefully, trying not to flinch as Michael crashed his keys down on the hallway table.

‘Nope
.’ Came the stony reply. There was a pause. ‘You made it here ok then?’

‘So it would seem. It’s a good job I remembered your address. Well Polly did
. I’m billing you for that long distance call by the way.’

‘Whatever
.’

Michael started tugging off his sweatshirt but it got tangled up with the Global Studios Security pass still hanging around his neck.

‘Fucking thing’ he yelled, ripping it off and hurling it at the wall. Yanking his clothes straight, he paused to glare at his reflection in the hallway mirror before stomping back outside.

‘Sorry
,’ he muttered, throwing himself down on the step next to Joe. ‘Didn’t mean to ditch you.’

Joe shrugged.
‘No harm done. After the luggage carousel tried to nobble me, working out the LAX taxi queuing system was a cinch. Anyway, I had a feeling something might be afoot with all that grimacing and white-knuckled phone clutching.’

Michael watched Benny reverse out of the driveway, swerve sharply
, then mangle the one part of his front lawn left intact by the Paparazzi stake-out after Joe had gone AWOL last month.

‘So what’s the issue
? Oscar, Love or Family?’

Michael put his head in his hands and sighed. ‘One and
Three and a WHOLE lack of Two.’

‘Oh dear, let me guess
,’ said Joe with a gleam in his eye. ‘Stephen’s declared his lust for your father and they’re hoping to elope before the Oscars?’

Michael gave a bark of laughter. ‘Believe
me, buddy, you couldn’t be further from the truth if you tried.’

‘
Ah. So you’re saying that your father’s fallen
out
of love with Stephen?’

Michael nodded and started tugging up handfuls of
stray weeds by his heel. ‘My dad just offered me Stephen’s head on a plate.’

There was another pause.

‘Idiot,’ chided Joe, reading between his frown lines. ‘I take it from the sheepish look on your face that you sent it back untouched?’

‘Yup
.’

‘
Ach. You could have at least stabbed him in the eyeball with a fork! Any particular reason for this undeserving show of leniency? Do elaborate, but make it brief. My arse is in agony after sitting on this fucking step all afternoon.’

‘
A one full page character assassination of Stephen in
Hollywood Film
by my father, a hasty retraction thirty minutes ago and a big ‘fuck-you’ in the face of Hollywood nepotism.’

Joe gazed at him in dismay. He couldn’t help admiring Michael’s noble nature, but to whisk away Stephen’s integrity this late in the game would have been lip-smackingly satisfying.

Michael started rummaging for his pocket in his phone.

‘Son of a..
.’ he exclaimed suddenly.

‘Seconds thoughts?’ asked Joe hopefully.

‘My phone! I was gonna show you the article but I must have…’ He stopped then and groaned. Christ! What a fool he was! The damn thing was still lying in amongst the debris of his father’s cupcakes.

Like the cupcakes, Walt Wilson was crushed by the whole incident. Packing a protesting Lucy off with his driver, he immediately instructed Serena to cancel his entire meetings schedule for the rest of the day, before barricading himself inside his office, bedding down on one of his leather sofas and inviting only hard liquor and self-indulgence in for company.

Michael’s words had wounded
him. Still, they hadn’t come close to the damage inflicted by his own remorse. In the five short minutes that his son had been inside his office, Walt’s guilt had burst into flames and his colossal ego had been reduced to ash. He had cancelled the article before Michael had set foot outside the building. The thought of losing his son was too awful to comprehend.

Refilling his crystal tumbler with another quadruple hit, Walt slammed the bottle back down
on his $5000 coffee table. He had found out the hard way today that a few carefully composed words were not nearly enough to repair the damage. The article had been a stab at a quick fix but it had backfired. He needed something else, something more substantial. A grand gesture with more heart than wallet.

As he sat there
, doubled over in anguish and with his head in his hands, a cell phone started bleating at him. Reaching under the sofa, his fingers closed around the delicate box of cupcakes. Ripping open the lid, he discovered his son’s cell phone lying in amidst the debris, smeared with crusty white icing and quivering like a newbie on the first day of school.

Grabbing the phone
, he answered it gruffly, thinking it was Michael. Instead, a very self-important-sounding Brit started yapping away at him like a terrier.

‘Mr Wilson, its Ray.
Ray Peterson…Your Private Investigator,’ he prompted starchily, when Walt didn’t react.

‘It took me a while but I’ve finally got
some news for you on Lily Moore.’ He stopped then to shuffle his papers about in an important-sounding manner. ‘It seems Lily and her son have been residing in Los Angeles for the past month and a half. Original trip was booked for the last three weeks of Jan but, for reasons unknown, they’ve decided to stay on. They checked out of the Disneyland Resort two weeks ago and moved to the Global Studios Hotel & Spa. Nice place, by all accounts. Been there myself. I say,’ he said, suddenly, ‘you’re not related to the Studio President are you? I’d love a little holiday this summer. You couldn’t swipe me a discount?’

Walt hung up on him
then. He detested freeloaders and his brain was far too busy processing the minutiae of the conversation.  

Lily Moore…Lily Moore… He rolled the name around his head like a fast spin cycle. As he did
, more and more questions kept popping up, like odd socks whizzing past the washing machine door.

Why was his son so intent on tracking this woman down? Could it be mere coincidence that she was
staying in his hotel? What’s more, why did he have an image of a gleaming white Cannes super yacht suddenly stuck in his head?